West Africa's Women of God: Alinesitoué and the Diola Prophetic Tradition

By Robert M. Baum

West Africa's Women of God examines the history of direct revelation from Emitai, the Supreme Being, which has been central to the Diola religion from before European colonization to the present day. Robert M. Baum charts the evolution of this movement from its origins as an exclusively male tradition to one that is largely female. He traces the response of Diola to the distinct challenges presented by conquest, colonial rule, and the post-colonial era. Looking specifically at the work of the most famous Diola woman prophet, Alinesitoué, Baum addresses the history of prophecy in West Africa and its impact on colonialism, the development of local religious traditions, and the role of women in religious communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9780253017918

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WEST AFRICA’S WOMEN OF GOD

WEST

AFRICA’S

WOMEN

of

GOD

Alinesitoué

and the Diola

Prophetic

Tradition

ROBERT M. BAUM

This book is a publication of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2016 by Robert M. Baum

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baum, Robert M., author.

West Africa’s women of God : Alinesitoué and the Diola prophetic tradition / Robert M. Baum.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01767-3 (cloth) — ISBN 978-0-253-01788-8 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-0-253-01791-8 (ebook) 1. Diatta, Aline Sitoe. 2. Diola (African people)—Religion. 3. Women prophets—Senegal. 4. Prophecy—Political aspects—Senegal. 5. Prophecy—Social aspects—Senegal. I. Title.

BL2480.D53B383 2015

299.6832—dc23

2015027314

1   2   3   4   5   21   20   19   18   17   16

To

the people of the Casamance who welcomed me

into their homes and families.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Prophets, Gender, and Religious Change among the Diola of Senegambia

2. The Diola: An Ethnographic Introduction

3. Koonjaen, Felupe, and Diola Prophets in Precolonial Senegambia

4. Women Prophets, Colonization, and the Creation of Community Shrines of Emitai, 1890–1913

5. Prophetism at the Peak of Colonial Rule, 1914–1939

6. Alinesitoué Diatta and the Crisis of the War Years, 1939–1944

7. The Prophetic Teachings of Alinesitoué, Her Successors, and a Contested Diola Prophetic Tradition

Conclusion

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I near the completion of this book, I would like to acknowledge a number of people who have made this possible. First, several thoughtful and determined women have helped to bring me to this occasion. I come from a line of powerful women, my grandmother Jessie Sachs and my mother, Beatrice Baum, and I had the good fortune to marry another powerful woman, Peggy Thompson Baum. Peggy has been a wonderful source of loving support and an excellent critic on this long journey, and she has facilitated both my frequent trips to Senegal and my long hours hiding in my study. Before their passing, my brother, Andy, and my father, Myron, exemplified a path of professional excellence and demonstrated their continued confidence in my abilities to see this through.

In Senegal, I could not have done this work without the extraordinary warmth and support of the people of Kadjinol, especially my adoptive family: Dionsal and Diongany Diedhiou, Elizabeth Sambou, Alphonse Diedhiou, as well as their children and grandchildren. Many of the people who helped me along the way are no longer with us. They include Dionsal, Diongany, Alphonse, and many of the elders who provided deep insights into Diola culture, religion, and history. Among those who have passed are Antoine Houmandrissah Diedhiou, Siopama Diedhiou, Adiabaloung Diedhiou, Kapooeh Diedhiou, Paponah Diatta, Boolai Senghor, Anto Manga, André Bankuul Senghor, Sikakucele Diatta, Badjaya Kila, Sawer Sambou, Pakum Bassin, Sooti Diatta, Agnak Baben, Fulgence Sagna, and Wuuli Diatta. I would be remiss not to thank those who I hope will see this book published, including Terence Galandiou Diouf Sambou, Gnapoli Diedhiou, Siliungimange Diatta, Sebikuan Sambou, Rosine Rokhaya Diatta, Rose Marie Khadi Diatta, and Atome Diatta, archivists at the Archives Nationales du Sénégal, especially Saliou Mbaye and Babacar Ndiaye, who have shared their deep knowledge of this rich source of historical materials. I wish to thank the readers of this manuscript, Ramon Sarro and Bruce Lawrence, for their useful commentaries. The late Marilyn Waldman and the late Alan F. Segal played critical roles in mentoring me in the early stages of my career, and I wish that they had seen this project through to completion, but they were taken from us way too soon. I would also like to thank David Robinson, my dissertation advisor, who has provided constant friendship and advice through the ups and downs of my journey through academe.

All of this work could not have been conducted without the research support of the various institutions where I have worked, including Iowa State University, the University of Missouri, and Dartmouth College. I have also benefited from support from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Residential Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research; the American Academy of Religion, the American Philosophical Society, and Northwestern University’s Institute for Advanced Study in the African Humanities. But it all began with a small summer study grant from Wesleyan University and then a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that allowed me to spend the year after college living and conducting research in Senegal.

I would like to thank my editor, Dee Mortensen, who has been a supportive and insightful colleague. I would also like to thank Darja Malcolm-Clarke, my project editor, for her diligence and support. I would like to thank Jonathan Chipman, who drew the maps, and Lee Gable, who prepared the index. Finally, I would like to thank my copyeditor, Margaret Hogan, who has worked miracles with this manuscript. I am truly amazed by her thoroughness, insight, and, above all, patience.

It has been a long journey, full of interesting detours. I hope they have made this a better work.

NORWICH, VERMONT, 2015

Portions of the article Prophetess: Aline Sitoé as a Contested Icon, which appeared in Toyin Falola and Fallou Ngom, eds., Facts, Fiction, and African Creative Imaginations (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 45–59, are reprinted by permission of Routledge.

Photograph of Alinesitoué courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal.

All translations from Diola, French, and Portuguese have been done by the author except where noted.

WEST AFRICA’S WOMEN OF GOD

ONE

Prophets, Gender, and Religious Change among the Diola of Senegambia

After finishing my doctoral dissertation on religious and social change in a pre-colonial Diola community in 1986, I returned to Esulalu, my research site and home base, in southwestern Senegal. I had planned to write a second book on Esulalu focusing on religious and social change in the colonial era, including the growth of Diola Christianity and the prophet Alinesitoué Diatta. When I arrived, however, people insisted on talking about a new group of women who claimed that Emitai (the supreme being) had sent them to teach about rain rituals and the reform of Diola community life. These women said that their dreams, visions, and auditory experiences came directly from Emitai. They claimed their experiences were part of a tradition extending back to Alinesitoué Diatta, a woman who had taught during the Second World War and been celebrated in Diola and Senegalese culture since her arrest and exile in 1943. These women came to revive local rain rituals directed toward Emitai so that It would end the recurrent droughts that plagued the region. I was already aware of male prophets who had been active before the French conquest, and Alinesitoué Diatta, but had been unaware of other women prophets who preceded her or followed her, and the importance of this tradition for Diola communities.¹

In the mid-1980s, a woman named Todjai Diatta, from the Department of Oussouye, gained a substantial following in many Diola townships. She revived a ritual, known as Kasila, in which people gathered in a public ritual to ask Emitai for rain. Other people, mostly women but some men, claimed messenger status, insisting that they were sent by Emitai, just as Alinesitoué Diatta had been in the midst of the Second World War.² Southern Diola gathered together to renew the Kasila ritual, which they performed in each sub-quarter of each township. They sacrificed a black bull, some pigs, and chickens, which the entire community consumed together for several days, accompanied by the singing of songs honoring the ancestors. Nothing of European origin could be used or worn at the ritual, as Diola asked Emitai to send rain to break the increasing frequency of drought and restore them to a position of self-sufficiency in the cultivation of rice. These prophets emphasized the importance of renewing the rituals of Alinesitoué and claimed to be her spiritual successors. By the 1990s, prophetic movements had spread to many northern Diola communities, particularly in the area known as Buluf, which had experienced massive conversion to Islam in the period after the First World War.³

My realization that Alinesitoué was not an isolated individual but part of a longstanding tradition of prophets, labeled with the epithet Emitai dabognol (whom Emitai had sent), demanded to be studied. I knew of no other African religious tradition that had so many claimants to privileged communication from the supreme being. This long tradition of prophets fundamentally challenged the scholarly received wisdom on the nature of African religions, the role of the supreme being within them, and the nature of traditional societies. Furthermore, I had begun some collaborative work with the late Marilyn R. Waldman, comparing the prophetic careers of Muhammad and Alinesitoué, which I wanted to develop in terms of this exceptionally rich tradition of direct revelation from a supreme being among the Diola.⁴ Just as Waldman hoped to incorporate Islamic traditions into the comparative study of prophecy, I wanted to expand the canon still further to incorporate Diola prophets within the discussion of prophetic leaders. As I finished my book on religious and social change during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, I began to gather information on these messengers of God, not only Alinesitoué but also lesser known prophets who came before and after her brief career during the Second World War.

As I expanded my work outside Esulalu and pursued this more-focused work within Esulalu, I found an increasing number of oral traditions and personal testimonies concerning people who claimed to be messengers of Emitai. Alinesitoué represented the best known example of a longstanding prophetic religious tradition, rather than the isolated figure emphasized in celebrations of her as a Senegalese or Diola Joan of Arc.⁵ Initially, this tradition consisted entirely of men whom Emitai had sent. Following the colonial conquest, it was transformed into a predominantly female prophetic tradition of people who taught in the name of Emitai. The colonial and postcolonial eras also witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of prophets claiming divine revelation. Each time I returned, I learned either about a new prophet or one who had been active in the past.

For twenty-five years now, I have been engaged in the study of this tradition of direct revelation from the supreme being among the Diola of southern Senegal, Gambia, and northwestern Guinea-Bissau. This work is a history of a tradition that stretches back to the earliest creation narratives and continues to the present day. I collected oral traditions describing fifteen men before the colonial conquest who claimed that Emitai had summoned them to the heavens or that they had originated with Emitai Itself. Emitai commanded them to teach about new spirit shrines (ukine) and what Emitai desired for the Diola to understand about their basic obligations on the awasena or Diola religious path. Since the colonial occupation by the French in Senegal, the British in Gambia, and the Portuguese in Guinea, at least forty-two other people have claimed such revelations, two-thirds of whom are women. French-speaking Senegalese described these peoples as prophets (prophètes). The Diola epithet used to describe them, however, means literally whom Emitai has sent, that is, a messenger of God.

In this work, I am describing both the transformation of an exclusively male prophetic tradition and its intensification in response to the distinct challenges of conquest, colonial rule, and the postcolonial era. The astounding number of such prophets, rivaling the number of actually named prophets in any of the Abrahamic religious traditions, questions the legitimacy of fundamental assumptions about the nature of African Traditional Religions and their ability to respond to and shape the challenges that their communities have encountered.⁶ Furthermore, it challenges the persistent claim that African supreme beings are deus otiotus, remote and seldom supplicated deities who began the act of creation and then left the world to the far more active lesser spirits and deities that inhabit African cosmos. Although this tradition is very local in scope, it is fully comparable to those of other religions that emphasize the importance of a supreme being who chooses messengers to communicate Its requirements and plans for their communities.

Recently published work by Waldman sets out to analyze the category of prophet in a critical and comparative way, seeking to create a new language for leaders who based their authority on privileged communications from a spiritual being or transcendent force not accessible to most human beings. Although the book became more limited in scope as her final illness took its toll, she and I wrote an essay comparing the most important of the Muslim Rasul Allah with the most famous of the Diola messengers of God, Alinesitoué Diatta, a young woman from Kabrousse, a Diola township on the Senegalese/Guinea-Bissau border.⁷ Our essay joins a growing body of literature that sees prophetic traditions not just as reaffirming the importance of tradition but of introducing religious innovation in the guise of restoration.⁸ What she began to do was to utilize the terms applied to people we wished to compare—Alinesitoué and Muhammad, for example—both to discern the similarities of these figures to their contemporaries and to determine what was unique or innovative about them. Finally, she created a catchment for such people cross-culturally to create a language for comparison that did not privilege any tradition but that sought to shed light on a range of phenomena existing in many traditions over many centuries, as heuristic devices that may help us to ask better questions about the people we consider too quickly to fall into the category of prophet. Most comparative accounts of prophets privilege Jewish, Christian, and/or Muslim ideas of a prophetic role.⁹

In their comparative work on prophecy, G. T. Sheppard and W. E. Herbrechtsmeier insisted that the category of prophet is limited to divinely chosen messengers to humankind, a daunting threshold that was difficult to achieve.¹⁰ It remains unclear whether all of the Abrahamic prophets were speaking beyond their own ethnic communities to humanity as a whole, and it is equally unclear in reference to Diola prophets. At least among the Diola, there does not appear to be a categorical distinction between those prophets who spoke only to the Diola and those who incorporated neighboring ethnic groups to hear their message. Furthermore, ethnic boundaries kept shifting throughout the period of this study. Sheppard and Herbrechtsmeier also share with many other commentators a focus on prophets in oppositional roles towards institutional authority. Although this is often the case, too little is known about some of the precolonial prophets to assert that with any degree of certainty.¹¹

What has become a normative focus on the Abrahamic traditions in the study of prophetism is reflected in the writings of John Mbiti, who claimed that he knew of no African tradition that incorporates what he would consider the strict definition of a prophet:

In the strict biblical sense of prophet and prophetic movements, there are no prophets in African traditional societies, as far as I know. I attribute this primarily to the lack of a long dimension of the future in African concepts of time, though there might be other contributing factors. . . . Some anthropologists talk about prophets and describe them in some African societies. These prophets belong to the category of diviners, seers, and mediums, and may have other religious or political functions in their societies. . . . I do not know of prophets in traditional societies who claim to be the prophetic mouthpiece of God in the manner similar to biblical or koranic prophets.

The concept of a long dimension of the future is problematic in many African societies that emphasize a cyclical view of time, reincarnation, and, in the case of the Diola, repeated destructions of the inhabitants of the world and their restoration. The distant future (denied as a category in African traditions, according to Mbiti) and the distant past are linked within an ongoing cyclical view of history.¹²

It is true, however, that diviners, seers, and mediums shared some characteristics with prophets, including biblical and qur’anic prophets. For scholars working primarily with Abrahamic traditions, a prophet was a person who speaks in place of or on behalf of the god.¹³ Like seers and spirit mediums, prophets received privileged communications from a being or force, but it was not always initially clear what the origins of the revelatory experience were. For example, on the Night of Power, the prophet Muhammad feared that his visionary experiences came from djinn (genies) rather than Allah. This possession by djinn would mean that he was being summoned to become a seer or medium rather than a messenger of God.¹⁴ Communications from the supreme being were considered to be marks of a prophet in Islam, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Communications from lesser spirits were not. I claim that there were similar distinctions in the nature of privileged communication within African religions. In Diola, for example, spirits are said to seize people (cadiouke) while Emitai selects individuals whom It sends as messengers (Emitai dabognol).

These Diola prophets are quite distinct from seers, mediums, and diviners. Diola messengers claimed that Emitai spoke to them and commanded them to share what they learned with the people of their communities and, by the colonial era, with neighboring peoples as well. They did not become possessed, nor did they simply relay the message, which characterized spirit mediumship. One Diola elder, for example, used the French term prophète for anyone to whom God spoke.¹⁵ Like the Abrahamic prophets, they were teachers as well as visionaries. They focused on the immediate needs of their communities to restore a proper relationship with the supreme being through ethical behavior and effective ritual, to end devastating periods of drought and other environmental dislocation, and to defend their communities against raids by neighboring groups. Diola prophets refrained from the use of mechanical means of prophesying, such as the tossing of palm kernels or cowry shells, or the reading of the entrails of sacrificed animals, which were typical of diviners. Such techniques could be taught and passed down, and were subject to interpretation by the practitioner. Diola prophets did not lose consciousness in their revelatory experiences like mediums did, only to have another person interpret the meaning and communicate the message.

The thrust of my research on Diola religious history has been to interrogate the idea of change-resistant societies and to explore the innovative qualities of traditional societies. I argue that these messengers of Emitai were partially responsible for the innovative qualities within a Diola religious tradition that have enabled it to adapt successfully to the challenges of the Atlantic slave trade, conquest and colonization, and the uncertainties of the postcolonial world. My present work expands the category of prophetic figures to include African women and men who claimed direct revelation from an African supreme being without major influences from the Abrahamic traditions and without being seen exclusively as prophetic movements in response to imperialism. While working beyond the strictures of a single prophetic tradition, I hope to provide a deeper understanding of the importance of a group of individuals who claimed that Emitai spoke to them and commanded them to teach what they learned, and who became a major source of religious innovation in a Diola religious tradition that continues to be a powerful force in the lives of the peoples of coastal Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau. I contend that this innovative capacity, embodied in people whom Emitai has sent, is a primary factor in the ability of Diola religion, the awasena path, to continue to serve the largest community of indigenous practitioners in the Senegambian region.

In an East African context, David M. Anderson and Douglas Johnson have engaged similar concerns about establishing a useful catchment of people and their experiences as prophets, despite the multiplicity of ways in which this term is applied:

In the corpus of anthropological and historical writings on eastern African societies, it is often difficult to appreciate the distinctions that exist from one community to another, between characters who are variously termed prophets, diviners, ritual experts, oracles, spirit mediums or even witch doctors. This indiscriminate use of terms has created a number of obstacles in the way of any comparative study of prophets, for we find that in many cases the only common element uniting a variety of persons or officiants is the title prophet imposed upon them in different ethnographies or histories.

Anderson and Johnson built on E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s use of the term, which drew on the Greek prophetes, that is, to speak for a god or spirit, and the Nuer guk that had been mistranslated as witch doctor but that actually referred to a man possessed by a spirit of something. . . . They are the messengers of the Gods.¹⁶ The anthropologist Dominique Zahan would agree with this emphasis on spirit possession rather than direct contact with a remote supreme being:

As strange as it may seem, the Supreme Divinity is not generally the pole toward which the innumerable threads of African spirituality converge. It does, however, constitute the ultimate stage of recuperating the vital human elements released at the moment of death. Altars are sometimes dedicated to him and offerings are made, but sometimes his name, if not his very existence, is unknown. As for mystic phenomena, especially those concerning possession, there is rarely any connection with the Supreme Divinity, more often than not it is the secondary divinities who have the monopoly on the piety and fervor of the believers.¹⁷

This book examines precisely what Zahan sees as rare: direct communication between a Supreme Divinity and a long line of human beings, from the Casamance/Senegambian region. I focus exclusively on those prophets or messengers who claimed the role of a mouthpiece or spokesperson for a singular deity known as Emitai. Those who spoke on behalf of lesser divinities are not included.

Toward a History of Diola Prophetic Movements

The Diola of southern Senegal and Gambia and northwestern Guinea-Bissau have diverse origins. An ethnic group the Portuguese called Floup or Felupe had entered the area by the late fifteenth century and were expanding northward toward the Casamance and Gambia River Valleys. As they entered this coastal region, they incorporated part of an earlier group of inhabitants known variously as Bainounk, Faroon, or Koonjaen. Within the Casamance, this incorporation process produced what is currently known as the Diola ethnic group. The earliest traditions of what we identify as Diola prophetism originated with these earlier inhabitants. Their traditions were later adopted into what became Diola religious traditions.¹⁸

Although written sources provide little evidence concerning revelations by Emitai to Felupe, Koonjaen, or Diola, oral traditions describe fifteen men who claimed such revelations, all before the European occupation of the lower Casamance. Indeed, narratives concerning direct communication between Emitai and human beings are central to Diola history, beginning with accounts of human creation. Oral traditions concerning prophets focus initially on Bainounk-Koonjaen men who claimed that Emitai spoke to them and commanded them to share Its teachings with their communities. These individuals were primarily concerned with the founding of various Koonjaen settlements south of the Casamance River, with the creation of a number of major spirit shrines, and with the procurement of rain. Oral traditions described these first prophets as returning to Emitai (dalagnene bot Emitai), that is, of flying up or being carried up by birds. Historians might immediately raise concerns about the historicity of such events. As Luise White has noted in her study of vampire stories in East and Central Africa, these traditions collectively constitute a genre that reveals much about the ways that people categorize and understand what they experience.¹⁹ Guillaume Rozenberg grappled with similar problems in understanding Burmese Buddhist traditions of sainthood:

WE WILL NEVER REALLY KNOW whether the great monk of Winsein fasted for sixty-five days, subjugated terrible ghosts, or appeared in the presidential office in Yangon. . . . But it does not matter, because as much as it is an affair of practices, facts and events, sainthood is also a matter of representations.

Whoever wishes to understand sainthood in one society or another must first ask himself what are, in this society, the constitutive values of the ideology of sainthood.²⁰

Whether or not any of the men described as ascending to Emitai actually did so, the central issue is that Diola oral traditions sustain a place for men who claimed revelations from Emitai to introduce rain shrines and then return to Emitai, in a period referred to as the time of the first ancestors. We do know of the close association between rainfall (Emitai ehlahl) and Emitai, a Felupe name for the supreme being that extends back at least to the seventeenth century. Linguistic linkages between Emitai, rain, and the concept of a year has been established for various southern Diola groups in Huluf, Esulalu, and Ediamat.²¹

Traditions concerning a second group of prophets describe men who settled in Felupe or Diola townships and introduced spirit shrines during periods of drought, before ascending to Emitai. They too were described as living at the time of the first ancestors, though often as sons or descendants of the other group. Both groups can be considered part of a genre often identified as culture heroes, founders of communities, and introducers of the various techniques of farming and other economic activities necessary for people to survive in a particular ecological niche.

Testimony concerning a third group who claimed direct revelation from Emitai describe men who died in the fashion of other human beings. This group can be situated within Diola lineages and initiation lists and appear to have been active in the eighteenth century.²² They are the first to be referred to explicitly as messengers of Emitai (Emitai dabognol). Finally, there is a group of Diola men, mostly from the northern areas, who were said during the nineteenth century to return to Emitai, but with descriptions reminiscent of earlier southern prophets. These traditions may reflect the more recent Diola settlement of the Fogny area by immigrants from the south because they link their networks of spirit shrines in the new areas of settlement to older traditions of Diola south of the Casamance River.

Accounts of women prophets in the precolonial era appear to be limited to the southern Bandial area and to neighboring ethnic groups of Bayotte and Ehing. These accounts, however, focus on contact with ancestors and spirits rather than the supreme being. These women were said to have the gift of double vision, an ability to see into the realm of the spirit and to become possessed by recently deceased members of their communities who had issues to resolve before they could peacefully enter the afterlife. The authors of an ethnographic account describing the Bandial community of Enampore use the term prophet to describe this type of power and inaccurately attribute this power of possession by the dead to the twentieth century woman prophet Alinesitoué Diatta. Alinesitoué, however, claimed her communications came from Emitai, not the dead.²³ The ideas of double vision and possession by spirits or ancestors, although important, do not correspond to the narrow use of the term prophet or messenger implied by Emitai dabognol for those people who claim authoritative communications from Emitai. I am not aware of actual spirit or ancestor possession in Diola religious traditions.

As European powers tightened their control over Diola territories, women prophets became active for the first time, introducing new rituals to supplicate the supreme being and reform community life. The earliest reports are frustratingly incomplete and inconsistent descriptions by Portuguese colonial officials of an unnamed woman prophet of God active among the Felupe in the late 1890s. Less than a decade later, in the immediate aftermath of the French arrest of the priest-king (oeyi) of Oussouye, three women claimed that Emitai had revealed Itself to them and sent them to introduce a new spirit shrine, also called Emitai. These women were referred to as Emitai dabognol. Since the first decade of the twentieth century, at least thirty-eight other people have claimed to be people that Emitai had sent. Some introduced shrines, while some opposed religious practices of their elders, colonial initiatives of the European administrators, or the invasive religions of Islam and Christianity. They all claimed, however, to have been sent by Emitai and to have been commanded to teach what Emitai had revealed to them.

These people, together with those described as returning to Emitai, constitute the category of religious leader that I am translating as prophet. The term Emitai dabognol corresponds most closely with the English term messenger of God or the Arabic term Rasul Allah, which usually refers to a special kind of prophet who established a new kind of community: Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. I limit my usage of the term prophet to those who claim to be in communication with Emitai. This distinction is important because it relies on the authority of a being who transcends the limitations of specific places, lineages, or gendered groups associated with lesser spirits.

These Diola prophets differ significantly from other religious leaders described as prophets in other studies of African religions. For example, the prophets described by Godfrey Lienhardt, Evans-Pritchard, and Johnson among the Dinka and Nuer were in sustained communication with emanations of the supreme being, what were collectively known as free divinities or spirits of the above. Evans-Pritchard states explicitly, Unlike the other spirits, God has no prophets.²⁴ Many of these free divinities were associated with specific clans. They also differ from Lugbara prophets who received communications from a divinity but did not themselves understand what they proclaimed. They practiced divination in order to understand the will of the supreme being or they spoke in tongues, which were interpreted by other ritual specialists.²⁵ Diola prophets have a greater similarity with the Meru of Kenya’s arcria, also known as mugwe, transmitter of blessings, who were said to have been chosen by God to predict the future and to bless various types of Meru endeavors, from farming to warfare. As Jeffrey A. Fadiman suggests, This task was filled by one individual during every generation who assumed the title of ‘mugwe’ transmitter of blessings. His role was to serve as intermediary for his people, invoking God’s blessing for each significant communal action and interpreting His wishes for the people as a whole. Still, the emphasis on his role as intermediary and the transmission of this office from father to son, as well as the absence of a requirement for revelatory experience, suggests a greater institutionalized high priest role than what I am describing as prophets.²⁶ Koonjaen, Felupe, and Diola prophets were more focused on obtaining rain, healing the sick, and waging war than on predicting the future. They received instruction about rituals, spirit shrines, and ethical imperatives. They established new shrine altars and shared the teachings they received from their communications with the supreme being.

In other African contexts, commentators have debated the differences between spirit mediums and prophets, even when both spoke in the name of the supreme being. Spirit mediums among the Shona and Igbo were closely associated with oracles of the supreme being, in the Matopo Hills of Zimbabwe and at Aro Chukwu in southeastern Nigeria.²⁷ In both of these cases, young women became possessed by a force associated with the supreme being and spoke in the voice of the deity but did not control the message. It appears that these women did not remember what happened during such sessions, and they often spoke in archaic forms of Shona or Igbo or a secret language known only to religious specialists. Male priests interpreted the utterances of these mediums and presented them as revealed teachings.²⁸ The women were the vehicles of the message but did not speak for the deity. Although they received privileged communications, they did not acquire a prophetic authority from this role.

I stress the importance of conscious agency in my definition of a prophet as a way of distinguishing them from people whose communications are interpreted by priests. Although Diola prophets appear to have had relatively little choice in whether to engage in prophetic teachings, they had the authority to shape both the content and their mode of teaching to their specific situation and the needs of the community in a way that possessed individuals could not. Possessed individuals rest outside of my catchment of people who were conscious of the experience of communication from the supreme being. Diola religious traditions do not include a tradition of spirit possession, in general or by Emitai in particular.²⁹

I deliberately limit my study to people described as sent by Emitai and as returning to Emitai. These are the people who I see as comparable to the English prophet or messenger of God, the Hebrew term nevi, or the Arabic term nabi or Rasul Allah. Given this definition of prophets, I collected oral traditions describing a total of fifteen men who claimed privileged communication from Emitai prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Most of these traditions concern the southern Diola areas of Esulalu and Huluf where I conducted most of my fieldwork. These are also among the oldest areas of Felupe and Koonjaen habitation where such traditions were likely to develop.³⁰ I have gathered some materials on early Diola prophets among the northern Diola, but efforts to gather more detailed information have been hampered by an unstable political situation in this area in recent years. Still, the possibility remains that there are other pre-colonial prophets who were active both north and south of the Casamance River.

Oral traditions about these early prophetic figures were rarely presented in initial interviews with people with whom I had only spent a limited time. Even in those areas where I lived intermittently since 1974, traditions concerning a majority of these prophets were not presented to me until the 1990s. Because these traditions often describe the creation of some of the oldest Diola spirit shrines, thereby situating them within a remembered history, they raise serious questions about Diola ideas of religious authority. The most powerful spirit shrines are often described as existing since the time of the first ancestors, effectively placing their claims to seniority beyond the longest genealogies. Tracing their origins back to this period enhances their claims to authority. Spirit shrines associated with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prophets were established within the period of established genealogies and can be situated chronologically. This suggests that they are younger and, to a certain degree, less powerful than those who can claim greater antiquity.³¹ Elders only shared information that challenged that sort of description with those who could handle such knowledge responsibly. After nearly twenty years of an involvement in Esulalu, many elders thought I was ready to receive such instruction. Moreover, the centrality of ideas of direct communication between the supreme being and human beings in creation accounts and in the history of a variety of spirit shrines suggest the antiquity of these ideas. As Louis Vincent Thomas noted, The original fetish is, in most cases, revealed by God and given by him to man.³² This idea was elaborated on by Paul Diédhiou, a sociologist from the Diola township of Youtou:

We say quite simply that the foundational principle of the ukine emanates from a superior power, God (Ata Emit). . . . To designate or to name a boekine, in effect, the Joola Ajamat speaks of Emitay yata ande, signifying by this the God of such and such. Thus, in the beginning God created the ukine, which reveal themselves to men by way of dreams, or illness or a misfortune. From this point of view all the ukine were founded by God (Ata Emit). This being reveals itself by the intermediary of ukine, called simete or simeetai [plural of emit, here referring to lesser spirits].³³

We have established that the Diola have a longstanding tradition of people sent by Emitai to introduce new spirit shrines and a range of ethical teachings. Furthermore, these messengers of God differ from most people who claim privileged communication in African societies both by their insistence that it is the supreme being who communicates with them and their ability to go out and teach about what they learned. This distinguishes them from what Mbiti would call diviners, seers, and mediums.

Female and Male Leadership in African Religions

Much of the literature on women’s religious authority and on women’s religious lives focuses on their experiences in a distinct and separate religious sphere. Men are often seen as dominating the public sphere of community ritual whenever men and women gather together, or when men perform rituals of community-wide importance. Studies of women in religion often emphasize religious vocations and women’s leadership within women’s communities in Christianity and Buddhism or in such women’s groups as the Sande society of West Africa. Much less attention has been given to women in positions of religious authority over communities that include both men and women. In a now-classic essay about the public and domestic spheres, Michelle Rosaldo analyzes the ways in which the public sphere is dominated by men, while women are restricted to a private, women-only sphere. This is particularly true in the realm of religion, which plays such a central role in regulating sexual expression and reproduction. Tracing the origins of such distinctions remains speculative, but the perception of women’s marginalization from the